Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 31, 2022 21:59:33 GMT 12
Air New Zealand pilot brothers Aotearoa's real-life 'Captain Kirks'
Lorna Thornber
19:00, Mar 31 2022
Air New Zealand captains Roger (left) and Philip Kirk on a rare professional flight together. SUPPLIED
Air New Zealand pilots Roger and Philip Kirk still chuckle at the Star Trek jokes that are inevitably cracked at their expense when people find out they are both real-life Captain Kirks.
“I’m worried. If both Kirks are there, who’s running the Enterprise?,” one person asked when Philip shared a photo on Twitter of his brother and himself in the cockpit of a recent return service from Auckland to Melbourne – their first professional flights together in about a decade.
Captain James Kirk (centre) and crew in an old Star Trek film. GETTY IMAGES
Another shared an image from a scene from The Original Star Trek in which “a transporter malfunction strands Sulu on a frigid planet and splits [Captain] Kirk into two people”.
“Please tell me your brother’s name is James,” another wrote. Incidentally James is Philip’s middle name.
While they expect the Star Trek jibes, Philip said they found many of those on the Twitter feed hilarious, although they hadn’t expected the post to be nearly as widely shared as it has been. As of March 31, it had attracted more than 20,000 likes.
“My son sent me a message saying ‘Dad, you’re going viral’. It was crazy. Just nuts. A huge surprise to see it go off like that. I had to turn off my notifications for a while, because it was madness.”
The brothers rarely fly together because there is usually only one captain in charge of an aircraft but, as a trainer, Philip is able to fly in the first officer’s seat. He didn’t discover he was flying the Melbourne route with Roger until he turned up to work and was told his first officer was no longer available, so his brother had been called in to replace him.
“So I turned up, and there was my brother standing there, which was super cool really. It was a really lovely day out.”
Several commenters on Philip’s Twitter post asked whether there is any sibling rivalry when they share the cockpit, but both brothers insisted there never is.
“We couldn’t be further away from being competitive really,” Philip said. “We’ve just had complimentary careers.”
Roger added that the “cockpit is no place for competition”, noting that procedure makes it quite a formal environment.
Roger and Philip with their dad Bill. SUPPLIED
“While you can chat in quiet times, it’s just not the place to start a bit of one-upmanship or anything stupid like that. A lot of stuff goes unspoken.
“When I was manning in Auckland (on the flight from Melbourne), just as I thought we could get off the normal exit point of the runway, Phil said ‘that’s not going to work’ and I said ‘you’re right’. I had that thought too. He got there a couple of seconds before I did. It’s quite uncanny how well you can work with your brother like that.”
As sons of a pilot and flight attendant, both Roger and Philip naturally gravitated towards flying. Their father was a pilot with former domestic airline the National Airways Corporation (NAC) and then Air New Zealand after the two carriers merged, while their mother was a flight attendant on the “flying boats” operated by Air New Zealand forerunner Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL). He started chatting to her on a flight to Auckland and the relationship “blossomed” from there, Roger said.
“But in those days, the moment you got married you had to give it up. You had to be single to be a stewardess. How archaic was that? So she got married to dad and had to give the job up. There was always aviation talk in the family for sure, but I did pity mum at times around the dinner table. I think we used to drive her a little bit crazy to be fair. We loved it but, at times, I think it was probably a bit much.”
An early “flying boat” aircraft. AIR NZ ARCHIVE
Roger has vivid memories of being bundled into the car at 4:30am so their mum could drop off their dad in Auckand’s Pt Chevalier, where crew would catch a bus to the airport.
“And then we’d go back home and back to bed unless it was a school day. So flying was just a part of family life.”
The early starts aside, there were some pretty big pluses. While most of their peers at school “would be lucky to take a car trip down to Rotorua for their holidays”, the young Kirks enjoyed breaks in the likes of Surfers Paradise.
“So flying was all around us,” Roger said. “It was always inevitable that it would catch us along the way.”
When Roger, the elder of the two, went to flying school, Philip often joined him on training flights.
“So it seemed like a very natural thing to do to just follow in his footsteps,” Philip said. “We’re both really passionate about aviation and have been for a long time.”
Roger has clocked up some 42 years with Air New Zealand, while Philip has been with the airline for 37 years. But even with their decades of experience, they still feel incredibly fortunate each time they sit at the flight deck.
“There’s something magical about it,” Roger said. “The feeling never evaporates. The sunrises are spectacularly beautiful. Even if you’ve sat in an aeroplane all night, you might not feel the best, but when the sun rises it perks you up.
“You see all sorts of magnificent sights in flight. You see rivers in flood down the country, perhaps. You see the water tearing out of the Kaikōura River and turning the ocean brown. There’s a lot of snow change during the year. It’s neat. And it’s also immensely good fun.”
Philip said he still gets a thrill when he walks around an aircraft to check it over before a flight.
“To this day I get really excited just walking around this great big piece of machinery and thinking “wow, we’re going to hop into this, start it up and fly across the Pacific to land somewhere in the States – whether it’s Chicago, LA or Vancouver.
“You look at it and think how incredible it is that this 250 tonne aeroplane is going to get airborne and keep everybody warm, and we’re going to feed them, and there are toilets that work and all the people and systems that make the aeroplane operate successfully.
“The customers walk on and just assume we turned up five minutes ago, but there’s the engineering component, the marketing component, the flight planners… There are so many people that make an airline work. We’re just the lucky ones who deliver the last little piece really; the very front end of it.”
Asked about the highlights of his career so far, Philip said he remembers seeing the “gorgeous” flight attendant who would become his wife for the first time at work in 1985. He also has fond memories of flying the now axed NZ1 route to London, recalling the pride he always felt when he saw the koru-branded aircraft on the tarmac at Heathrow.
Roger described the London route as “magnificent”, saying “You’d fly across Greenland and see the Northern Lights at certain times of year. They look great from the ground, but even better from up in the air.”
He relished flying one of the busiest routes in the world and landing at one of the world’s busiest airports, so was ecstatic to be able to visit the control tower at Heathrow just before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My impression of Heathrow Tower was of an oasis of calmness and competence,” he said. “It was quiet and everybody knew exactly what was going on. It was a wonderful operation. It was just superb.”
Both are excited about Air New Zealand’s new non-stop flights to New York, set to begin on September 17. The flights, which will be numbered NZ1 and NZ2, will be among the longest in the world, taking just over 16 hours to New York and 17-and-a-half hours on the return journey.
Both brothers are excited about Air NZ’s new non-stop flights to New York. 123RF
“It’s great it’s going to be the new NZ1 and NZ2,” Philip said. “When we used to fly to London, you’d often hear NZ2 coming the other way, and some moments you’d have NZ1 and NZ2 on the same frequency talking to the air traffic controllers. It was always a very cool thing to sneak in a quick “hello”, which you’re not really meant to do. But of course that’s going to be happening again with NZ1 and NZ2 operating to New York.”
While cargo flights continued to operate even when border restrictions were at their tightest, Roger said they didn’t compare to flying passengers.
“It was just such an odd feeling to open the flight deck door and go back to organise your own dinner and see a whole bunch of empty seats. It’s so nice having people back on board again.”
They have been encouraged by the number of international passengers since border restrictions eased, but said the vast majority thus far have been travelling to visit family and friends. Roger said there are some “courageous [holidaymakers] who are heading off to wherever they want to go and good on them,” but he believes a significant number of New Zealanders will wait to see how others fare on overseas trips before heading away themselves.
Whatever happens in the world of aviation, it seems the Kirk family will continue to play a part. Roger’s son Jarred is also a pilot with Air New Zealand, and his stepdaughter is training to be one as a second career option after completing a law degree.
www.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/300555332/air-new-zealand-pilot-brothers-aotearoas-reallife-captain-kirks
Lorna Thornber
19:00, Mar 31 2022
Air New Zealand captains Roger (left) and Philip Kirk on a rare professional flight together. SUPPLIED
Air New Zealand pilots Roger and Philip Kirk still chuckle at the Star Trek jokes that are inevitably cracked at their expense when people find out they are both real-life Captain Kirks.
“I’m worried. If both Kirks are there, who’s running the Enterprise?,” one person asked when Philip shared a photo on Twitter of his brother and himself in the cockpit of a recent return service from Auckland to Melbourne – their first professional flights together in about a decade.
Captain James Kirk (centre) and crew in an old Star Trek film. GETTY IMAGES
Another shared an image from a scene from The Original Star Trek in which “a transporter malfunction strands Sulu on a frigid planet and splits [Captain] Kirk into two people”.
“Please tell me your brother’s name is James,” another wrote. Incidentally James is Philip’s middle name.
While they expect the Star Trek jibes, Philip said they found many of those on the Twitter feed hilarious, although they hadn’t expected the post to be nearly as widely shared as it has been. As of March 31, it had attracted more than 20,000 likes.
“My son sent me a message saying ‘Dad, you’re going viral’. It was crazy. Just nuts. A huge surprise to see it go off like that. I had to turn off my notifications for a while, because it was madness.”
The brothers rarely fly together because there is usually only one captain in charge of an aircraft but, as a trainer, Philip is able to fly in the first officer’s seat. He didn’t discover he was flying the Melbourne route with Roger until he turned up to work and was told his first officer was no longer available, so his brother had been called in to replace him.
“So I turned up, and there was my brother standing there, which was super cool really. It was a really lovely day out.”
Several commenters on Philip’s Twitter post asked whether there is any sibling rivalry when they share the cockpit, but both brothers insisted there never is.
“We couldn’t be further away from being competitive really,” Philip said. “We’ve just had complimentary careers.”
Roger added that the “cockpit is no place for competition”, noting that procedure makes it quite a formal environment.
Roger and Philip with their dad Bill. SUPPLIED
“While you can chat in quiet times, it’s just not the place to start a bit of one-upmanship or anything stupid like that. A lot of stuff goes unspoken.
“When I was manning in Auckland (on the flight from Melbourne), just as I thought we could get off the normal exit point of the runway, Phil said ‘that’s not going to work’ and I said ‘you’re right’. I had that thought too. He got there a couple of seconds before I did. It’s quite uncanny how well you can work with your brother like that.”
As sons of a pilot and flight attendant, both Roger and Philip naturally gravitated towards flying. Their father was a pilot with former domestic airline the National Airways Corporation (NAC) and then Air New Zealand after the two carriers merged, while their mother was a flight attendant on the “flying boats” operated by Air New Zealand forerunner Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL). He started chatting to her on a flight to Auckland and the relationship “blossomed” from there, Roger said.
“But in those days, the moment you got married you had to give it up. You had to be single to be a stewardess. How archaic was that? So she got married to dad and had to give the job up. There was always aviation talk in the family for sure, but I did pity mum at times around the dinner table. I think we used to drive her a little bit crazy to be fair. We loved it but, at times, I think it was probably a bit much.”
An early “flying boat” aircraft. AIR NZ ARCHIVE
Roger has vivid memories of being bundled into the car at 4:30am so their mum could drop off their dad in Auckand’s Pt Chevalier, where crew would catch a bus to the airport.
“And then we’d go back home and back to bed unless it was a school day. So flying was just a part of family life.”
The early starts aside, there were some pretty big pluses. While most of their peers at school “would be lucky to take a car trip down to Rotorua for their holidays”, the young Kirks enjoyed breaks in the likes of Surfers Paradise.
“So flying was all around us,” Roger said. “It was always inevitable that it would catch us along the way.”
When Roger, the elder of the two, went to flying school, Philip often joined him on training flights.
“So it seemed like a very natural thing to do to just follow in his footsteps,” Philip said. “We’re both really passionate about aviation and have been for a long time.”
Roger has clocked up some 42 years with Air New Zealand, while Philip has been with the airline for 37 years. But even with their decades of experience, they still feel incredibly fortunate each time they sit at the flight deck.
“There’s something magical about it,” Roger said. “The feeling never evaporates. The sunrises are spectacularly beautiful. Even if you’ve sat in an aeroplane all night, you might not feel the best, but when the sun rises it perks you up.
“You see all sorts of magnificent sights in flight. You see rivers in flood down the country, perhaps. You see the water tearing out of the Kaikōura River and turning the ocean brown. There’s a lot of snow change during the year. It’s neat. And it’s also immensely good fun.”
Philip said he still gets a thrill when he walks around an aircraft to check it over before a flight.
“To this day I get really excited just walking around this great big piece of machinery and thinking “wow, we’re going to hop into this, start it up and fly across the Pacific to land somewhere in the States – whether it’s Chicago, LA or Vancouver.
“You look at it and think how incredible it is that this 250 tonne aeroplane is going to get airborne and keep everybody warm, and we’re going to feed them, and there are toilets that work and all the people and systems that make the aeroplane operate successfully.
“The customers walk on and just assume we turned up five minutes ago, but there’s the engineering component, the marketing component, the flight planners… There are so many people that make an airline work. We’re just the lucky ones who deliver the last little piece really; the very front end of it.”
Asked about the highlights of his career so far, Philip said he remembers seeing the “gorgeous” flight attendant who would become his wife for the first time at work in 1985. He also has fond memories of flying the now axed NZ1 route to London, recalling the pride he always felt when he saw the koru-branded aircraft on the tarmac at Heathrow.
Roger described the London route as “magnificent”, saying “You’d fly across Greenland and see the Northern Lights at certain times of year. They look great from the ground, but even better from up in the air.”
He relished flying one of the busiest routes in the world and landing at one of the world’s busiest airports, so was ecstatic to be able to visit the control tower at Heathrow just before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My impression of Heathrow Tower was of an oasis of calmness and competence,” he said. “It was quiet and everybody knew exactly what was going on. It was a wonderful operation. It was just superb.”
Both are excited about Air New Zealand’s new non-stop flights to New York, set to begin on September 17. The flights, which will be numbered NZ1 and NZ2, will be among the longest in the world, taking just over 16 hours to New York and 17-and-a-half hours on the return journey.
Both brothers are excited about Air NZ’s new non-stop flights to New York. 123RF
“It’s great it’s going to be the new NZ1 and NZ2,” Philip said. “When we used to fly to London, you’d often hear NZ2 coming the other way, and some moments you’d have NZ1 and NZ2 on the same frequency talking to the air traffic controllers. It was always a very cool thing to sneak in a quick “hello”, which you’re not really meant to do. But of course that’s going to be happening again with NZ1 and NZ2 operating to New York.”
While cargo flights continued to operate even when border restrictions were at their tightest, Roger said they didn’t compare to flying passengers.
“It was just such an odd feeling to open the flight deck door and go back to organise your own dinner and see a whole bunch of empty seats. It’s so nice having people back on board again.”
They have been encouraged by the number of international passengers since border restrictions eased, but said the vast majority thus far have been travelling to visit family and friends. Roger said there are some “courageous [holidaymakers] who are heading off to wherever they want to go and good on them,” but he believes a significant number of New Zealanders will wait to see how others fare on overseas trips before heading away themselves.
Whatever happens in the world of aviation, it seems the Kirk family will continue to play a part. Roger’s son Jarred is also a pilot with Air New Zealand, and his stepdaughter is training to be one as a second career option after completing a law degree.
www.stuff.co.nz/travel/kiwi-traveller/300555332/air-new-zealand-pilot-brothers-aotearoas-reallife-captain-kirks
